


Woodsmoke and Jasmine (Citrus and the Sea)

by PrioritiesSorted



Series: Erosion [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, I just really wish we'd seen some Katara and Lin interaction, Mother-Daughter Relationship, but then more hurt..., mention of Aang, mention of Katara/Aang, mention of Lin/Tenzin, mention of Tenzin, mention of Zuko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26381362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/pseuds/PrioritiesSorted
Summary: Lin knew she should have talked to him about it years ago, when she turned thirty, and Tenzin had started dropping heavier and heavier hints, but she’d been too much of a coward. She really should have talked to him about it two years ago, after Aang died, and the hints started to have an edge of desperation. She could feel her breaths coming heavier as she remembered the tortured look on his face that afternoon, the anger and the betrayal that had laced his every word.Gentle fingers on her arm brought Lin back to reality.“Did he ever ask you, Lin?” Katara asked, and Lin frowned. “Did he ask you what you wanted?”
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Lin Beifong & Katara, Lin Beifong/Kya II
Series: Erosion [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937920
Comments: 39
Kudos: 327
Collections: sadass





	Woodsmoke and Jasmine (Citrus and the Sea)

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone: "False Reports" sequel???
> 
> Me: Can I interest you in some angst?

Lin sat with her back to the wall, her arms around her knees, trying valiantly to stop her hands shaking. People would comment when she didn’t show up at dinner, she knew, and Tenzin would likely make up some flimsy excuse, unwilling to air their dirty laundry to the rest of his family. She should really leave the island, slip out the back way and wait for the ferry back to the city, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. The room smelled musty, clearly uninhabited for several years, but she could fool herself that there was still a familiar, comforting scent in the air, and no-one would think to look for her here. 

She jumped as someone cleared their throat outside the room. She held their breath, willing them to keep walking, but then the screen slid open to reveal Katara, a steaming bowl of rice in her hand. 

“I thought you might be hungry,” she said evenly, sliding the screen closed behind her. Lin could only stare as Katara crossed the room and sat beside Lin on the bed. There was a heavenly smell coming from the bowl in her hand, but Lin’s stomach was too full of knots to even consider eating. It felt as though her heart had sunk all the way into her stomach, leaving her chest empty and hollow. Katara looked at her for a moment before she set the bowl down on the bedside table, signing gently. Lin kept her gaze firmly on her knees, waiting for Katara to leave, but there was no shift in weight on the mattress, no soft pat of feet on the floor, no whoosh of the screen door opening and closing. Instead, Katara took a deep breath before she said, 

“Tenzin told me what happened.” 

Oh. That was why she was here. Of course. Lin braced herself for Katara’s next words, ready to hear the careful reprimands and reminders of her duty as Tenzin’s partner. She already knew she had failed him, had selfishly put her own desires and her own fears above what she knew he needed from her. She’d heard it all already this afternoon, when Tenzin had found her stash of contraceptive tea. Well, _found_ was a strong word. She had never hidden it from him, she’d been drinking it every morning in the open for the entirety of their relationship; it wasn’t her fault if he’d assumed it was simply a flavour she enjoyed. She knew she should have talked to him about it years ago, when she turned thirty, and Tenzin had started dropping heavier and heavier hints, but she’d been too much of a coward. She _really_ should have talked to him about it two years ago, after Aang died, and the hints started to have an edge of desperation. She could feel her breaths coming heavier as she remembered the tortured look on his face that afternoon, the anger and the betrayal that had laced his every word. 

Gentle fingers on her arm brought Lin back to reality. 

“Did he ever ask you, Lin?” Katara asked, and Lin frowned. “Did he ask you what you wanted?” 

It was the last thing she had expected, and Lin finally looked up at Katara, whose smile was small and sad. Lin shook her head. 

“What would’ve been the point?” she said, her voice cracked from the afternoon’s shouting match. “Wouldn’t have changed anything.” 

“Wouldn’t it?” 

“No. When we got together, and for the first few years I really thought I could do it, y’know? I told myself I wouldn’t mind coming to live out here and putting the brakes on my career so I could pop out a couple of airbenders.” Lin suppressed a shudder at the thought, and hated herself for it. “I thought as I got older I might even _want_ to be a mother, I might not be so afraid that I’d fuck it all up. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but maternal instinct doesn’t exactly run in my family.” 

Katara’s eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly, her jaw tensing with the effort of staying quiet, and Lin couldn’t help remembering the terse words that had passed between Katara and her mother over the years. She remembered crying—a rare occurrence, even at five years old—when it came time to go home from Air Temple Island, and the white lipped rage that radiated from Katara the entire ride back to Toph’s home in the city. Lin had thought at the time that it must be her fault for making a fuss, but perhaps she had been wrong. 

“I understand, Lin.” 

“No, you don’t.” Lin snapped. Katara was the heroine of a sweeping romance. Katara did everything so _easily,_ she was a mother and a healer and an advocate, and Lin knew she had been a fierce warrior in her youth. How could a woman like Katara ever understand the ugly mix of fear and regret and resentment that pumped through Lin’s veins? She was so _angry,_ angry at herself and at Tenzin and at the world, for putting her in this position. 

She expected Katara to leave her, to sigh the way everyone else did when Lin got prickly, and decide she was best left alone. But instead, Katara looked at though she was considering something, glancing almost nervously towards the door when she spoke. 

“Do you remember the story Aang used to tell you kids about how we fell in love?” 

Lin nodded. She’d heard the story more times than she cared to, in all honesty. Tenzin loved nothing more than listening to his parents’ love story, and when they were younger he would drag Lin by the hand to disturb Aang during his meditations so the Avatar could tell the tale in full. Aang would always smile the same indulgent smile, pulling Lin and Tenzin into his lap as he began, _“I opened my eyes for the first time in a hundred years, and there she was…”_

Lin had loved and hated it in equal measure. Aang’s voice was deep and soothing, his presence solid and warm, and the story itself was as moving as it was exciting. But when the time came for Aang to return to his work, Lin would be reminded once again that this was something she had simply borrowed—no father waited for her at home, and she had learned early that questions about him were met with terse dismissal rather than nostalgic storytelling.

“Well, that was Aang’s version of the tale.” Katara continued, unaware of the aching pain the memory caused Lin. “Mine is… a little less rose tinted. I loved him, of course I did, almost from the first day I knew him, but not in a romantic way. I wanted to protect him, I would have done anything for him, I thought he was incredible; he’d woken up one day and the whole world had changed, his family, his culture had been wiped out and he had no time to grieve for them. He was too busy carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.” Lin remembered the sadness that Aang could never keep from his voice whenever he spoke of his people, of the time before the war; it had always seemed so jarring, so at odds with his usual lightness and warmth. There was a sadness in Katara, too, as she remembered. 

“All he ever asked for was… me. I felt so wretched knowing that I couldn’t give him what he wanted, when it was in my power to do so. And in the end, I decided it was worth it, to make him happy. I won’t pretend it was easy, those first few years, because it wasn’t. I felt like I’d given up part of myself, like _Katara_ was disappearing, and I was becoming nothing but _The Avatar’s Girl._ ” Katara gave her a knowing look, and Lin could not pretend that she didn’t understand. She knew her own worth as a person, she had achieved her current position through grit and determination—in spite of rather than because of who her mother was—yet when she was out with Tenzin, she felt herself almost melting away. In the eyes of the people, she stopped being Lin Beifong, Captain of the Republic City Police; instead she was merely Tenzin’s Wife—never mind that they weren’t married—and the Mother of the Future Air Nation—never mind that she didn’t even _want_ children. For a moment, memories of words flung between her and Tenzin earlier that day threatened to encroach on Lin’s mind, but she slammed that door closed and said, 

“But—you always seemed so happy.” 

Katara smiled. 

“We were. I was. It took some time, but I did grow to love him the way he’d always wanted me to. I think I was twenty the first time my heart skipped a beat when I saw him, like it used to with—” Katara cut herself off. Lin knew she shouldn’t pry, that she should leave it alone if Katara didn’t want to share, but there were other memories now, pounding against other doors that had been shut for almost twenty years, and Lin had to know. 

“There was someone else?” she prompted. Katara looked at her for a long moment before nodding. 

“Yes,” she confirmed, “I thought perhaps that you didn’t need to know, because it didn’t matter, but I think it does, doesn’t it? I knew to look for you here, after all.” 

Lin’s heart skipped a beat. Katara couldn’t be implying what Lin thought she was implying. It had been eighteen years since she was last in this room, and she remembered it like it was yesterday, as hard as she tried to forget. 

* * *

_Kya was laying on her bed when Lin slid the screen open, lazily turning a water bauble from liquid to ice and back again. Everything about her movements was so easy, Lin thought, fluid and graceful in a way that Lin herself had never been; she’d hoped she might grow into it, that one day her hips would acquire the casual swing that she’d always found so distracting on Kya, but she was eighteen now, and no such qualities had ever presented themselves._

_“You gonna come in, Lin? You’re letting in the draft.” Lin jumped at the sound of Kya’s voice, quickly closing the screen behind her. She took a breath, trying to order her thoughts—she had come here with a purpose, after all—but before she could do so, Kya spoke again._

_“Something on your mind, kiddo?”_

_“Don’t call me that.” Lin snapped back, instinctually. “I started at the police academy two months ago, not that you’d know. You weren’t here.”_

_“No, I wasn’t.” Kya agreed, and it was only because Lin knew her so well that she could feel the tension in her voice. “But_ some _people do keep me updated on the goings on around here while I’m away. Tenzin mentioned it in one of his letters.”_

_“You don’t approve.”_

_“Doesn’t matter what I think, does it?” Kya shrugged, and Lin wanted to push her, wanted to know why everyone in her life thought this was such a bad idea. Her own mother had only sighed when Lin had proudly announced her intention to join the academy, to follow in her footsteps. Lin had a feeling she could have announced she had discovered a cure for all of the world’s deadliest diseases, and her mother still wouldn’t have been impressed. But that wasn’t what she’d come here to talk about, so Lin only shook her head._

_“No, it doesn’t.”_

_“So it’s not my opinion on your career choices you’re here for.” Kya smirked, and most of the unease still hanging in the air between them melted away. Another quality of Kya’s that Lin could only covet—if there was any tension remaining in the room, it was because Lin held it tight in her balled fists, unable to release._

_“No,” Lin said. Kya raised an eyebrow._

_“So... what is it?”_

_Lin took another breath before she answered, still clinging to the screen door, ready to bolt at any moment._

_“The others at the academy, they’re all so different from me.” Kya frowned, as if this was the opposite of what she’d expected. “They’ve lived so much more than I have already. I can wipe the floor with all them when it comes to bending, but I know what they say about me in the locker rooms afterwards: that I’m just a sheltered rich kid, that I’ve got no life outside of training, that I’ve probably never—” this was it, this was what Lin had come to say, but the moment was here and she could not force the words through her lips. She should never have come to Kya with this, Kya who had probably never had to worry about anything like this, who had always been independent and outgoing and who had travelled all over the world. Kya who was looking at Lin now as though she pitied her. Lin wanted nothing more than to wrench the screen open behind her and flee, but she was a Beifong, not a coward. “Some of them said that—that they’d bet no-one had ever kissed me. That no-one would ever want to.”_

_There it was, hanging out in the open. It was so stupid, Lin knew. It was probably one of the less insulting things that was said about her, yet the other remarks all slid off her armour with relative ease. But this one, this stupid, unimportant, unthinking little dig had wriggled its way through to the soft parts of her that Lin didn’t care to show. And it wasn’t true, either, not entirely, at least. She’d never been kissed, that much she admitted, but it wasn’t for lack of interest. She might not be beautiful the same way that Kya was beautiful—she could hear her grandmother’s favourite compliment, “you could be so pretty if you made a little effort, Lin'' ringing in her ears—but she’d noticed people looking at her. She’d noticed Tenzin looking at her, recently, with something in his big, grey eyes that might be longing. She’d say yes if he asked her to be his girlfriend, she’d already decided; no-one made her feel safe like Tenzin did. Certainly not Kya, who made her heart jump sometimes for no reason, and who was as likely to leave without saying goodbye as she was to show up in your room unannounced with gifts from her travels._

_“Never thought you’d take any notice of that kind of thing.” Kya said, her voice unbearably soft. Lin shrugged, and Kya held out her hand, urging Lin away from the door. She crossed the room slowly, eventually sitting tentatively down on the edge of the bed next to Kya._

_“Usually I wouldn’t. I don’t know. I just feel stupid, being eighteen and never—I should know what I’m doing, at least.” Lin grumbled, and Kya fought to hide her laughter behind her hand._

_“Of course. No-one should be able to best you at anything, huh?”_

* * *

“Who was he?” Lin asked, instead of acknowledging Katara’s question. Katara, because she had always been too good, let it slide. 

“A friend,” she answered. “I don’t even know if he—no. That was a lie I used to tell myself to make it hurt less. I’m fairly certain he felt the same way I did.” Though her face was lined, and her hair had turned grey many years previously, Katara’s eyes sparkled with youthful unknowing, and the hope that came with it. Lin wondered if that spark, those feelings that Katara had for another, had ever really died. She knew too well how you could love a person to the very bones of yourself, while still being painfully aware there was someone else out there in the world who made your stomach flip in a way no-one could ever match. 

“Then didn’t he have a problem with you choosing to be with Aang?” Lin asked, confused. 

“No. But then I’m fairly certain he had no idea how I felt about him. He really thought I was in love with Aang, even then.” She laughed a little, as though the idea was ludicrous. “I’ve wondered a few times in recent years if I should tell him, but I’m not sure what good it would do us now. It’s been so many years, and we’re both so different now.” 

* * *

_Lin shoved Kya with her shoulder, and promptly found herself with her head under Kya’s arm, her face pressed against Kya’s side. She should want to extricate herself, Lin knew, but Kya smelled like citrus and the sea—it was oddly comforting._

_“Don’t test me, kiddo. I grew up with Bumi.” Kya teased, and Lin pushed her away. Kya let her go, still laughing at Lin’s scowl. Lin’s heart was pounding in her chest, and she could feel the pink blush spreading across her cheeks._

_“Don’t call me that! You’re only four years older than I am. I should never have come to you anyway.” Lin got up and started to move towards the door, but Kya was quicker; her hand encircled Lin’s wrist, holding her back._

_“Okay, okay. You’re extra touchy today, huh? You can come to me about anything, Lin, you know that.” Kya said gently. She was always so_ earnest _, Lin couldn’t stand it. “I’ll admit I am a little surprised. You know if you wanted to get some experience, Tenzin would be more than happy to help you out.” A smirk wiped the earnestness from Kya’s expression, and something shifted uncomfortably in Lin’s chest._

_“Why would I ask Tenzin for advice? He’s never kissed anyone either.”_

_Kya’s smirk became a genuine smile at that, and she let go of Lin’s wrist, letting her long fingers trail along the blue veins until they came to rest in Lin’s palm._

_“Practical as always.”_

_“I just thought—I know you like women and you’ve… you’ve probably had a lot of experience with… that and—” Kya cut Lin off with a squeeze to her hand, and said,_

_“Lin Beifong, are you asking me to teach you how to kiss?” There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye, but Lin knew better than to think Kya would mock her now._

_“I guess. If you want. I know I’m not really beautiful, but—” Kya cut her off again, this time with a cool hand against her cheek._

_“Lin, don’t. Don’t say that. Fuck—when I left home you were just a skinny kid and now… Lin you’re…” Kya trailed off, letting her fingertips trace the sharp line of Lin’s cheekbone. All the mirth had disappeared from Kya’s eyes, replaced with something that Lin could only call awe. All the air seemed sucked from the room, and Lin’s heart was beating so thunderously she was afraid her mother would hear it from the other side of the bay and know exactly what she was doing._

_“So will you?” Lin asked, her voice barely audible as she brought her own hand to Kya’s hair, running her fingers through dark brown waves. She thought briefly that it shouldn’t be like this; when she’d imagined it, Lin had always been looking up at Kya, not down. Kya had always been tall, but that didn’t matter when she was sitting on the edge of her bed, and Lin was standing in front of her. She supposed it wasn’t really important, besides that when she did this for real, it would be with a boy, and he would probably be taller than her. Tenzin was taller than her._

_But she didn’t want to think about Tenzin now. Kya’s hair was so soft, and her eyes were so blue, and her hands were so cool against Lin’s skin._

_“I don’t know if this—if we—I know how my brother feels about you. I shouldn’t—” Kya breathed, but her gaze kept flickering from Lin’s eyes to her mouth, and Lin could feel the adrenaline coursing through her body as she let the fingers of her other hand brush against Kya’s lower lip. She felt Kya’s breath hitch beneath her fingertips._

_“I’m not asking you to marry me,” Lin said, trying and failing to seem nonchalant. “It’s just a kiss. It doesn’t mean anything.”_

_Lin had a feeling she was lying as Kya dropped her hand to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her closer._

* * *

“So he’s still alive?” Lin asked, a theory she hadn’t known she was forming becoming stronger by the second. 

“Don’t interrogate me, Lin.” Katara chastised her gently. “The point I’m trying to make is that as much as I loved him, as much as I think he loved me, the two of us could never have been together. Even if I’d been willing to hurt Aang that way, even if we’d been honest with each other about how we felt, it wouldn’t have been possible.” 

“Why not?” 

“A lot of reasons, most of them political. It wouldn’t have looked good for either of us, especially considering most of the world had been thinking of me as _The Avatar’s Girl_ since long before it was true.” She said, with a calm resignation that Lin could not fathom. “Peace between the nations was so fragile back then, and we were all hardened by the war. We were just children, but we already knew that the balance we had all fought so hard to accomplish was more important than any of our adolescent feelings.” 

Lin could understand that, she supposed. Work hadn’t allowed her to travel much, but she knew that the relationships between the four nations still hadn’t entirely healed from the hundred year war, even now. 

“And you never wondered what it might have been like?” she asked. 

“What what might have been like?” Katara returned. “There are so many things that might have happened. I thought about kissing him plenty of times, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps it would have changed everything, perhaps nothing. Maybe I would have chosen an entirely different life, or maybe we would have come to the same decisions, in the end. I think it would have been so much more painful that way, to have the memory of a kiss, the smell of woodsmoke and jasmine in my hair, the surety of a love returned. I think it would have taken me longer to let him go, longer to fall in love with Aang, longer to allow myself to be truly happy. So, _yes_ , I suppose is the answer to your question. I have wondered about it. I have wondered about it at length.” 

Lin wished she didn’t understand. She wished Katara wasn’t right. 

* * *

_Their lips met messily, excitable and overeager. Lin felt Kya smile against her mouth as she eased Lin into something softer, slower. As Lin concentrated on matching the pace that Kya had set, on mimicking those actions that made her shiver, she let her hand drop to the base of Kya’s neck, her thumb stroking the delicate skin there. Kya hummed contentedly against her lips, and Lin thought that perhaps she_ should _have asked Kya to marry her, if it meant she could have this every day for the rest of her life. The idea was stupid, and Lin pushed it away, trying to concentrate on the motion of Kya’s mouth against her own, the pressure and the speed—_

_“Hey,” Kya breathed, pulling away just enough to speak, her lips still brushing against Lin’s, “I can hear you overthinking it. Relax.”_

_Lin nodded and captured Kya’s lips again, allowing herself to be caught in the push and pull of it. It was easy—Kya made everything so easy—and Lin wanted to be closer, wanted to feel the warmth of Kya’s body against her own. If she had to leave this room ever again, she would leave it smelling of citrus and the sea. When Kya took Lin’s bottom lip into her mouth so she could close her teeth gently around it and suck, Lin could stand it no longer; she lifted a knee onto the bed, needing to eliminate the space between them. Kya whimpered her agreement and hooked a hand under Lin’s other thigh, pulling her in so she was straddling Kya’s lap. She’d known instinctively that it would feel good, but she hadn’t anticipated the warmth of Kya’s body, the softness and the strength of Kya’s thighs between her own, and the fire it would light in her belly. Lin let out an involuntary gasp as Kya’s arm tightened around her waist, opening her mouth slightly against Kya’s, trying to get closer, closer._

_She felt her breath hitch as Kya licked into her mouth, the heat of her tongue catching Lin by surprise. The sensation was odd, but far from unpleasant, and Lin allowed Kya to control the push and pull of it, letting herself get carried away in the sweet drag of their lips, and the taste of ginger on Kya’s tongue; she sucked on it experimentally, and Kya groaned, pulling away._

_“Sorry,” Lin said, hating the sudden space between them. “Did I do something wrong.”_

_“No,” Kya insisted, resting her forehead against Lin’s, “no you’re—fuck—top of the class, Miss Beifong. You’re graduating with honours.” She was breathing heavily, and Lin wanted to kiss her again. She tilted her face to press their lips together once more, but Kya pushed her back gently, and Lin felt something inside her fracture. “Lin, I can’t—”_

_She scrambled out of Kya’s lap and made for the door, her breath coming too fast and her heart beating too loudly and her face flushed far too pink in mortification. Of course Kya didn’t want to kiss her, she was just doing Lin a favour, and Lin had taken it too far. The best thing she could do now was leave, and they never had to speak of it again._

_“If I asked you to come with me when I leave, would you?” Lin’s hand froze halfway to the catch on the door. Surely Kya hadn’t asked—”would you come with me, Lin?”_

_For a moment, Lin could see it so clearly, and she ached for it: for sunsets over Caldera city, for nights huddled in igloos under the northern aurora, for dawn breaking at the Great Divide._

_“No,” she heard herself say._

_She should have left it at that, should have slid the door open and left, but instead she turned._

_“If I asked you to stay, would you?”_

_Kya was still sitting on the bed, her hair mussed and her lips red from kissing. She met Lin’s gaze with such sadness in her wide, blue eyes that Lin knew what her answer would be before Kya opened her mouth._

_“No,” Kya said, quietly._

_The few feet between the bed and the door felt like miles, suddenly, and Lin wanted nothing more than to cross the chasm between them and bury her hands back in Kya’s soft hair. She wanted to take Kya’s already swollen bottom lip between her own just once more, to commit every last curve of her to memory, but she could not. If Lin allowed herself to crawl back into Kya’s lap, even for a second, she would never be able to leave._

_So instead she nodded, and opened the door._

* * *

“So you just… let him go? Even though you knew you might be unhappy for the rest of your life?” Lin asked, and Katara shook her head. 

“No, not at all. I let him go because I chose stability over passion. With Aang, I knew I might not love him the way he loved me, but I knew my life with him would be—certainly not easy, being married to the Avatar was never going to be a walk in the park—but I knew he wanted the same things I wanted out of life. I would be able to help people, and have the family I’d always dreamed of. With—” Katara caught herself, that sad smile gracing her lips again before she continued. “If I’d chosen differently, we might have loved each other, but the world would have made it so difficult. We were both a little... volatile in our youth, and eventually we would have taken our frustrations out on each other. He made me feel such extremes of emotion and it… it scared me. After the war, after everything we’d been through, I chose safety.” Lin wanted to close her ears, wanted not to hear the words that—for all the gentleness in Katara’s voice—pierced her insides. “I think, perhaps, I’m not the only one who chose that way.” Katara was looking at her as though she knew every traitorous thought that had ever invaded Lin’s mind, and she would not judge her for them. Lin could feel tears pricking at the backs of her eyes, and she willed them away, refusing to allow herself to crumble again. 

“What are you saying?” Lin asked. “That I should just stick it out? That I made my choice, like you did, and if I can only suck it up and have Tenzin’s little airbender babies I’ll finally be happy?” The thought made her stomach churn unpleasantly, and there was a tremor in her voice that Lin wished she couldn’t hear. 

“Quite the opposite.” Katara placed a wrinkled palm on Lin’s check, sweeping her thumb across as though wiping away a tear that hadn’t yet fallen. “You aren’t me, Lin, and Tenzin isn’t Aang. The two of you… you want such different things. Can you really tell me that life with Tenzin still feels safe? Do you still feel stable?” 

“You’re telling me I should dump your son?” There was an all-too-familiar part of Lin that wanted to lash out, to tell Katara she didn’t have to invent a sad story just to get her out of Tenzin’s life. Katara didn’t give her the opportunity. 

“I’m telling you that you deserve happiness, Lin,” she said, with the same terrible earnestness that always caught Lin off guard. “You don’t have to be what everyone else wants you to be. I learned that too late, and I waited too long to pass it on to you. If you’re happy with Tenzin, then I’m sure you’ll work it out.” 

The weight of what Katara didn’t say hung between them, but Lin found it didn’t need saying. She and Katara understood each other; it was a rare enough feeling for Lin to appreciate it when it came. 

“Thanks, Katara,” Lin said. Katara gave her shoulder a final squeeze and moved to leave her alone. 

Before she could open the door, Lin called impulsively, 

“You should tell him. Zuko.” Katara stiffened, and Lin worried if she’d over-stepped. Then she heard a soft laugh. 

“You’re not a detective for nothing, I suppose,” Katara said, and Lin shrugged. 

“It wasn’t hard. You had like four male friends back then, and one of them was Sokka.” 

Katara smiled, turning back towards the door and Lin knew she had seconds to ask the question that had been burning in her since she realised Katara _knew._ She had been a coward before, but she would not be one again. 

“Katara? Did she ever—did she ever talk to you about—about me?” Her voice was smaller than she would have liked, but Katara must have heard her, because she stopped once again on the threshold. She did not turn back, this time, only said, 

“No. But I’m her mother, I knew what you meant to her.” 

Katara closed the door behind her, and Lin let out a single choking sob. With Katara gone, the hopelessness that Lin had felt began to creep back in, and Lin wrapped her arms around herself as she fell sideways onto the bed. She would have to face Tenzin again soon; she would have to think about what Katara had said; she would have to make a decision one way or the other. 

For a few minutes, though, Lin allowed herself to simply lie there, letting her tears soak into the blankets, imagining they still smelled of citrus and the sea. 

**Author's Note:**

> Will this become a series? Perhaps. Not a long one but I just... hate to leave my girl like this.


End file.
